More People Are Reportedly Suing For Defamation After Being Accused of Sexual Misconduct

On college campuses, the numbers are rising.

As more and more people come forward with stories of sexual harassment and assault, BuzzFeed News reports that more and more people who are accused are filing defamation lawsuits.

According to BuzzFeed News, lawyers report they're seeing more and more people filing defamation lawsuits against people who accuse them of sexual misconduct on college campuses. While concrete numbers are hard to track, lawyers told BuzzFeed News that they used to see few to no defamation cases after a student accused another student of sexual misconduct on campus — but now they're starting to see this more often, and expect the numbers may grow. Threatening a defamation suit against an accuser is reportedly even being considered as a strategy when someone is accused.

"What I think has come to the surface much more in the past two years is the actual filing of those lawsuits," Colby Bruno, of the Victim Rights Law Center, told BuzzFeed News. A few years ago, Bruno said about 5 percent of her cases involved a client who was being accused of defamation after a sexual misconduct allegation. Now, she said, that's increased to a little more than half of her clients. "Your life is dragged into yet another thing that you didn’t want to get dragged into in the first place, with the first being the rape or sexual assault."

While groups like Families Advocating for Campus Equality exist to help the accused get a fair shot at justice, lawyer Brett Sokolow told BuzzFeed News an increase in these cases may discourage victims from coming forward. Sexual misconduct is already widely underreported, according to RAINN, with only 20 percent of female students who have experienced sexual assault reporting their attacks. In general, about two out of every three sexual assaults goes unreported.